Election Atlas
Methodology
What a page is showing
A page lists offices, election days, and result rows that have been ingested, with the source that supports them when a publisher, title, and locator were supplied. The counts on the homepage are those ingested records. They are not a claim that every office in a country is included.
Missing is not zero
A number that was not supplied stays blank and is labelled not supplied. A recorded zero stays zero. Unknown, not applicable, preliminary, disputed, withheld, and superseded values stay in those states. They are not coerced to zero, and they are not dropped so that a later average can ignore them.
Dates
A date keeps the precision it was given. A day, a month, a year, and a range are different. A month is not stored as the first day of that month. A range is not stored as a single day. If two dated claims conflict and neither is adopted, both claims stay and the single resolved date is not supplied. The two claims are not merged into a range.
Evidence
A preliminary or provisional figure stays labelled that way. It is not treated as a certified result. A withheld value stays withheld. Statistical completeness does not prove that a result was certified. A recount or another version of the same count is part of that count, not a second election. An annulled result remains evidence; it does not become a completed term.
A note that names a person on a date does not mean that person holds the office now. The Atlas shows a current holder only when the ingested record supports one. Otherwise the holder is not supplied.
Sources
A source is identified by the publisher, title, and locator that were supplied. A public web address is not permission to republish the file, and it is not evidence that every number on the page is final. Rights stay unknown unless the source states them.
Holds, withholds, and corrections
A hold is a named gap. The record stays as supplied until a source fills it. A withhold is a value the Atlas will not present as settled. A correction replaces a claim only when a source supports the replacement.